One-third of Michigan families fight to earn enough for basic needs

There were 308,000 low-income working families in 2011 in Michigan, representing 32 percent of the total 966,000 working families, up from 27 percent in 2007, a national study released Thursday said.

In addition, the number of low-income working families continues to grow, with nearly a third of all working families in the United States now struggling to earn enough money to meet basic needs, a new report by the Working Poor Families Project shows.

Michigan ranks 26th in the nation in the percent of low-income working families.

"Despite certain economic indicators showing that the economy is slowly improving, there are still more than 300,000 low-income working families here in Michigan who are not feeling any economic uptick," said Gilda Jacobs, president and CEO, Michigan League for Public Policy.

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"Our state is one of 10 across the country where the share of low-income working families has increased by more than 5 percent since 2007. Clearly, more legislative action is needed to ensure that Michigan's vulnerable populations have access to the programs and educational opportunities that will allow them to get ahead -- which will better allow our state to get ahead."

Nationally, the number of low-income working families -- sometimes called the working poor -- increased by 200,000 to 10.4 million in 2011 over the prior year, according to the analysis of new Census Bureau data. Those 10.4 million families constitute 32 percent of all working families -- up from 28 percent in 2007 -- and represent 47.5 million Americans.

At the same time, nationally the economic gap between high-income and low-income working families continues to widen. In 2011, the top 20 percent of working families earned 10.1 times the total income earned by the bottom 20 percent, up from 9.5 times in 2007.

Nationally, with unemployment remaining high, a large number of low-income families are challenged to find full-time, good paying jobs, the study said.

The analysis found, though, that more than seven out of 10 low-income families were working in 2011; despite working, many of these families simply don't earn enough money to pay for basic living expenses. Family budgets were impacted by high transportation and child-care costs at a time when often the only jobs that could be found tended to be in eight occupations that do not pay wages adequate for supporting a family -- including cashier, cook and health aide.

"Clearly, there have been positive signs over the past two years that the broad economy is improving, but the gains are not helping these low-income working families," said Brandon Roberts, who co-authored the analysis. "The American dream is premised on the ability of families to better themselves through hard work. Yet as this data shows, today's working families clearly face a more challenging situation than those in the past."